Why a Booktrail?
1980s: The third book in the Yorkshire mystery series
The Murder at Redmire Hall
What you need to know before your trail
Lord Redmire’s gambling habit has placed him in serious debt. Determined to salvage his fortune by putting Redmire Hall on the map, the aristocrat performs an impossible locked-door illusion on live TV. But as the cameras roll, his spectacular trick goes fatally wrong…
Special guest DCI Jim Oldroyd has a front-row seat, but in all his years with the West Riding Police he’s never witnessed anything like this. He sees Redmire disappear—and then reappear, dead, with a knife in his back.
As Oldroyd and DS Stephanie Johnson soon discover, nearly everyone at the event had a reason to resent the eccentric lord. But how did the murderer get into the locked room—or out, for that matter?
When the only other person who knew the secret behind the illusion is brutally silenced, the case begins to look unsolvable. Because as Oldroyd and Johnson know, it’s not just a question of who did it and why—but how?
Travel Guide
Redmire Hall, outside Ripon
Fictional in name but clearly modelled on the very real and lovely to visit, Newby Hall
It’s the place you could imagine this story really happening. The house has its nooks and crannies and when someone has already pulled off an illusion performing a trick of disappearing from a locked room.
Now, many years later, the new Lord Redmire is once again ready to perform the same trick but on television and in front of some visiting policemen. But of course, it goes wrong and the murder mystery element kicks in.
Ripon in Yorkshire has a police and jail museum nearby which is particularly apt when you read the story. At least they have keys you can escape with here. It’s all very Midsomer Murders and set in a gothic mansion with wooden floors, creaking floorboards and an air of mystery everywhere, it is the perfect setting for a mystery.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
A great third outing in the Yorkshire mystery series.
I get a certain frisson being in a gothic manor house in the English countryside ensconced in a locked room mystery. I may not be as brave if I were there in real life, but in a novel, well I lap it up and this was a great mystery which I really enjoyed.
The premise was exciting from the off – a trick once performed in a locked room is going to be recreated on the television. Well you know what’s going to happen here, but it’s what happens next that is the real treat. Who killed the victim and why? How?
There’s not many books you get to see the how and why unravel already knowing the who. It’s like the literary equivalent of a columbo episode and kudos to the author for recreating the whole feel and essence of the country manor in a more modern time than most country manor set novels are generally set.
DCI Jim Oldroyd of the Harrogate police is a great character and I feel he and the rest of the cast need their own TV show. The investigation is taunt and exciting as the number of suspects grows, the plot thickens with twists and turns aplenty. The clues are there but I didn’t spot many at all which I was very pleased about. Even you guess some of them, the ending is more than satisfactory and very clever!
Those Carstairs are a wild and weird bunch!
Grab yourself a cup of Yorkshire tea and a fat rascal ( a very hard scone with spices sold at Betty’s tea room, not a character in the novel) and settle down for a darn good read.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Murder at Redmire Hall
Destination : Yorkshire, Ripon Author/Guide: J. R. Ellis Departure Time: 1980s, 2000s
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